For quite some years, SEO—Search Engine Optimisation—has carried around the same predicted destiny as the GDS systems for hotels: by now, they both were supposed to be dead, and just like the GDS, this prediction ended up being completely wrong.
NB: This is an article from Hotelchamp
The point is: SEO is more alive than ever. It’s surely changed a lot. Yet, the fundamentals and principles behind a very good Hotel SEO structure have essentially remained the same over time. Moreover, these fundamentals and principles don’t have to be technical, difficult, nor expensive.
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Put differently, even though you might have very little (or no) budget and very little (or no) technical skills, you will always be in the position to make your hotel SEO skyrocket. All you need is a good strategy, good content and follow a bunch of simple yet essential guidelines that will rule your hotel SEO game. And this is exactly what we are going to talk about in this blog.
So, if you are a hotelier who believes in no shortcuts to getting things done, even with limited resources, but rather with the desire to do everything in your power to make your hotel stand out from the competition, this post is for you.
Know your market. Or pick one.
You’ve certainly heard the old saying “marketing to everyone = marketing to no one”, haven’t you? Let’s see an example:
Now let’s think about it: if you were to look for a hotel for your next family trip (just to make an example), would you prefer a hotel that serves specifically (or mainly) leisure travellers or another hotel that serves both leisure and business travellers, indistinctly. The answer is obvious and logical. So should be your SEO. No one wants generalists. Everyone wants specialists.
Forget about all the technicalities and difficult terms that you hear every time you listen to someone talking about SEO. SEO is pure logic, just like any other marketing strategy, so focus on your specific market segments and, if you have many, focus on one, or at least the most important ones, but no more than two or three, tops.
Families? Couples? Solo travellers? Business? MICE? Your call. And be the specialist of that market.
How to structure a good (basic) setup
All over the internet, you’ll find plenty of very good articles and posts about SEO and, specifically, SEO for hotels. However, we wanted to minimize the technical part as much as possible. Because here’s the thing: 90% of SEO is… Content.
Yet, the remaining 10% that represents the technical part of SEO, if not done well, can destroy the huge effort you put forth when creating wonderful content. So, for a very little moment, let’s quickly cover a few things that you need to take care of every single time you write good SEO content. Some of these things are what people see when searching on Google, therefore these are the most important ones:
